Hero's Quest or Holy Man's Test? (Part One)

Now the Lord said to Abram,

"Go forth from your country,

And from your relatives

And from your father's house,

To the land which I will show you;

And I will make you a great nation,

And I will bless you,

And make your name great;

And so you shall be a blessing;

And I will bless those who bless you,

And the one who curses you I will curse.

And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed."

So Abram went forth as the Lord had spoken to him...

Genesis 12:1-4

No actually, I kind of need you to read that again, only slower this time.

What Happened to Peleg?

A large hole in my research

"Also to Shem, the father of all the children of Eber [Shem's Great-grandson]...children were born."  Genesis 10:21 (NASB) 

Or, put another way:

Also to Name (reputation, memorial), the father of all the children of The Region Beyond...children were born."

Aside from Eber's Grandfather Arphacshad, the Bible mentions four other sons (descendant tribes and kingdoms) of Shem, along with five grandsons, two great grandsons, and 14 great great grandsons.

As much as I'd like to display at least some of the 23 tribes of Shem on the Google Earth Chart, that's a research project all by itself since I never really delved into those branches of the Seed's family tree, and very few of the sources I know of agree with each other.

Maybe as we go along, I can start making educated guesses about some of them, so here's my safest bet:

From what I can gather, after the confusion of Babel the tribes of Shem lived between Cush and Canaan, and on the Sinai Pennisula.

***

Teacher Talk: Working with Tables

I already showed you the chart of the sons of Adam down to Noah. Here's another one that covers the generations from Noah to Jacob.

Don't feel like you have to understand every piece of information before you move on, but if you can compare the next two sentences to the chart, and answer two simple questions, you're in good shape to let the story explain why I'm including it:

Noah was born in the year 1056 AA (Age of Adam); Shem was born 500 years later, and lived to be 600.

Arphacshad was born in the year 1658 AA or 2 PD (Post Diluvium (after the flood)).

Name	Yr Born	Yr Died	Age
Noah	1056 AA	2006AA/350 PD	950
Shem	1556	2156       500	600
Arphacshad	1658 AA / 2 PD	2096       440	438
Shelah	1693          37	2126       470	433
Eber	1723          67	2187       531	464
Peleg	1757          101	1996       340	239
Reu	1787          131	2026       370	239
Serug	1819          163	2049       393	230
Nahor	1849          193	1997       341	148
Terah	1878          222	2083       427	205
Abram	1953          297	2128       472	175
Ishmael	2039          382	no record	???
Isaac	2053          397	2233       577	180
Jacob	2113          457	2260       604	147

AA = Age of Adam  PD = Post Diluvium (after the flood)

Now for the questions:

• What year AA did the flood hit? [ 1656 ]
• How old was Shem at the time?    [  98  ]

You can highlight the space between the brackets to check your answers. If you like, you can share how you arrived at your answers in the comments below.

Enough Teacher Talk, Lets tell a story:

Ur of the Chaldeans, the ancestral home of Noah, was situated on the southwest edge of Shinar (Sumer). There's no way to tell if Ur was part of the kingdom Nimrod started there, but it's hard to imagine that there was no interaction between the two.

The Sumerians were farmers, and looked down on shepherds, but they had to have meat, animal skins, and wine. Ur, the Chaldeans, had all those things.

I don't know about you, but if I wanted to expand my kingdom to the north, I couldn't think of better neighbors to have in the south than my own cousins, as long as they fueled my ambition.

The dangerous thing about ambition is that it's never satisfied. Look how far north the Sumerians extended themselves. The first rule of empire being grow or die, sooner or later it becomes necessary to turn to your neighbors for additional lebensraum, elbow room.

The Four Horsemen ride again...or still.

It took about 300 years from the time the ark landed for the conditions between Shinar and Ur to reach the point of mutual paranoia, and another forty years for paranoia to mature into aggression and rebellion.

"Two sons were born to Eber; the name of the one was Peleg, for in his days the earth was divided..."  Gen 10:25 (NASB)

Eber was the father of the Hebrews.*

Peleg (Division), a second generation Hebrew, joined or maybe even mounted the insurgency that swallowed Babel and scattered the peoples. It's just as possible that the infant race of Hebrews didn't want any part of it, but got caught up in it. Either way, the apparent fallout would be the same.

"Peleg lived thirty years, and became the father of Reu; and Peleg lived two hundred and nine years after he became the father of Reu, and he had other sons and daughters."  Gen 11:18-19 (NASB)

Peleg only lived for 239 years, making him the first son of Noah to die (Shem lived long enough to see the birth of Jacob). It was the year 340 PD.

Peleg wasn't the only casualty of the events surrounding Babel's fall. Peleg's great-grandson, Nahor died a year later, at the tender age of 148, and conditions must have been too hot for his son, Terah who had lost his own son, Haran.

"Haran died in the presence of his father Terah in the land of his birth, in Ur of the Chaldeans." 
Gen 10:28 (NASB)

Terah gathered what was left of his family and beat feet to points north, to a place called, coincidentally or not, Haran, in order to prepare another of his sons to turn south and plant the Seed in the land of Canaan.

Next time: The Sons of Terah Through Nahor

Peace Y'all

*All Hebrews were Semitic, but not all Semites were Hebrew.

The Tyranny of Babel

"The Lord said, 'Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. and this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them. come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another's speech.'"      (NASB)

So let me get this straight... Civilization is clicking along, everyone's cooperating, people are speaking the same language, building great monuments and temples, and along comes God. He whammies them, and strikes a dissonant chord in the harmony they had created.

Why would he do that?

The Morning After

You know the story. Noah planted a vineyard, got drunk, took off his clothes then passed smooth out in the middle of the tent. Ham apparently walked in on him and thought it was funny enough to call his brothers in to share the spectacle. The next morning, Noah curses Ham…and this is where the preacher or other story teller goes off on… “Bad Ham…” and “Bad Noah…” and “Preach on the Devil Alcohol…!”

Enough already! The Word weeps over the human experience it wants us to understand, but we’re too damn busy looking for people to stone for their sins to listen.

First of all, no one takes note that Noah’s sons were there that day. They were grown and married before they got on the ark in the first place. How much time could they waste before they started building their own families, and taking advantage of all that empty land? I mean sure, they probably got together often, several times a year I imagine, but each time they did it was bound to be a full blown occasion.

Here’s the part we need to get: The night in question was years after the flood.

So let’s rewind a little bit, and go back to the day Noah finally ripped the cover off the floating barn he’d been living in for the past year, and I’ll tell what I think led up to Noah’s embarrassment. Just remember, before we start judging Noah and branding him as a drunk, we ought'a consider the difference between Ham's response to God's grace.

And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. The fear of you and the terror of you will be on every beast of the earth and on every bird of the sky; with everything that creeps on the ground, and all the fish of the sea, into your hand they are given. Every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you; I give all to you, as I gave the green plant."                                     Genesis 9:1-3 (NASB)

Noah and his kin went back to Ur, probably skirting the west bank of the Euphrates, and I’m betting they took extra care of the twelve bovines, twelve sheep and twelve goats they already had, and collected the choicest grapevine roots as they went. The grapevines were there for the taking all along that stretch of abandoned orchards, vineyards, and washed out villages between the mountains of Ararat to the north and Noah’s ancestral home, near or perhaps even on the future site of Ur, at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers far to the south.

When he got there, and this is weird, he went straight back to farming…but wait a minute. Wasn’t Noah the one who was supposed to give the tribes of Adam rest from the curse of the land?

That’s why he had a cartload of healthy grapevine roots behind the pair of oxen God told him to save.

Grapes aren’t like grain crops. Grain crops take about nine months or less to produce. Vineyards take years before they bear usable fruit, but once established the yields and the profits can be enormous, especially if you’re apparently the first one in your area to produce wine.

The upshot is that Noah was pretty well settled in when he and the whole family, grandchildren included, got together to celebrate a (their first?) successful vintage. A regular family reunion -- ahem  -- a holy day solemnly dedicated to …Naaah… There was a party. Those things can go on for days, especially when you consider what they were celebrating.

So…yeah…Noah overdid it and ended up flat on his back and naked, but like I said, it was a family reunion. Everything would have been fine if Ham had just tucked his father in for the night and forgotten about the whole thing.

I mean, Damn man! Be cool with each other. Especially when it comes to your parents.

But Cain’s drunk ass thought it was funny, and he just had to make sure everyone (the entire world, it turns out) knew about it.

Ham’s brothers Shem and Japheth on the other hand, had the presence of mind to salvage their father’s dignity. They did their best to not even look as they tucked their father in for the night.

Of course, Noah found out and for the first time in the Bible the father bestows blessings and, when called for, curses on his children, and appoints his successor as patriarch and seed bearer, in this case Shem.

So he [Noah] said,

"Cursed be Canaan;

A servant of servants

He shall be to his brothers."

He also said, 

"Blessed be the Lord,

the God of Shem;

And let Canaan be his servant.

"May God enlarge Japheth,

And let him dwell in the tents of Shem;

And let Canaan be his servant."

Genesis 9:25-28
(NASB)

What Ham had done was so reprehensible that his father didn't even bother cursing him. He cursed Ham's son, Canaan and the tribes that would descend from him.
Funny thing about the blessings and curses in the Bible; they often foreshadow events hundreds of years later, because the Canaanites would dominate the area around the Jordan river centuries later when Moses lead the Israelites to, but not into, the Promised Land.

Next Time: The Kingdoms and Nations of Japheth and Ham

Peace Out Y'all

The Sixth Seal

Noah, his name means Rest because, they said; "This one will give us rest from our work and from the toil of our hands arising from the ground which the Lord has cursed."

I guess it was Noah who figured out that his people made better shepherds and vintners than they did crop farmers, or it may have something to do with the fact that the flood moved Noah and his family farther north, near the modern border between Syria and Turkey. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

Prelude To The Sixth Seal

Seth called on the name of YHWH, and Enoch walked with YHWH, but people are people; and when it comes down to it, the Sons of God were people.

The Sons of Man (the pre-flood Sumerians) were as fruitful and religious as the Sons of God. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil had spawned an orchard, and the fruit was tasty; exotic women, vast riches, and great power. All the Sons of Adam had to do was forget who they were.